The present invention relates to an imaging system and method. More particularly, the present invention relates to an imaging system and method using radiopaque microspheres to evaluate organ tissue perfusion.
The present standard for measuring organ tissue perfusion/flow in animal studies is the "radioactive" microsphere technique wherein radioactive microspheres are administered to the organ tissue. A significant limitation with this technique, however, is that it requires organ dissection and postmortem radioactive counting for flow determination. Moreover, this technique is limited to animal studies and cannot be used in the clinical evaluation of humans.
Measurements of organ tissue perfusion in both animals and humans has been obtained with computerized tomography (CT) imaging in conjunction with a soluble contrast agent such as a water soluble iodinated contrast agent. However, problems associated with this technique include the recirculation of the contrast agent and its partial diffusion into the tissue. As a result, curve fitting techniques such as a gamma variant analysis are required and dynamic "fast" CT scanning is necessary to accurately image the contrast agent bolus.
The present invention solves these and many other problems associated with the prior art.